> What would the Americas -- the world -- look like today if the Europeans never came here? Or at least, came and engaged respectfully
One historical scene in particular plays out this idea. It occurred as Cortes marched across today's Mexico towards the city and ruler he had heard so much about. At one point — not yet at the city — Moctezuma sent some emissaries to greet him. They brought two others with them, who were sacrificed in front of the Spaniards.
You can find accounts of this story from both sides: from the chronicles of Cortes and his conquistadors (Bernal Diaz, for example) and from native accounts (as told in The Broken Spears, as another example). And the differing reactions to this event tell you everything. The Spaniards were appalled, some even cried. But the emissaries were totally baffled by their reaction to the gift.
What you see is two cultures separated by an almost unimaginable amount of time, distance, and history. The clash that occurred would have been hard to prevent whenever it happened. As others have pointed out, even basic biology (immunity) was different enough to make an enormous difference without people consciously having to do anything.
Peter Watson's "The Great Divide: History and Human Nature in the Old World and the New" is a pretty fascinating examination of the overall contrasts between Eurasian and New World cultures. It's a story that's hard to tell, and there is a lot of speculation and ambiguity. What is clear, above all else, is that the whole ordeal ended tragically, insomuch as it ever ended at all.
I just wanted to add to this that it's not as if the Spaniards were appalled by violence itself, just by the cultural difference in how it was applied. As Montaigne pointed out, early modern Europeans were at least as cruel toward enemies and captives, they just expressed it in different ways: i.e. via public executions of witches and heretics, or the tortures of the Inquisition and secular courts. Admittedly Montaigne is writing here about Tupis from Brazil rather than Aztecs, but his point applies in both cases I think:
"After having treated their prisoners well for a long time, giving them all the provisions that they could one, he who is the chief calls a great assembly of his acquaintances. He ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner and on the other end, several feet away, out of harm's way, and gives to his best friend the arm to hold; and the two of them, in the presence of the assembled group, slash him to death with their swords. That done, they roast him and eat him together, sending portions to their absent friends. They do this, not as is supposed, for nourishment as did the ancient Scythians; it represents instead an extreme form of vengeance. The proof of this is that when they saw that the Portuguese, who had allied themselves with their adversaries, executed their captives differently, burying them up to the waist and firing numerous arrows into the remainder of the body, hanging them afterward, [the Tupi] viewed these people from another world, who had spread the knowledge of many vices among their neighbors, and who were much more masterly than they in every sort of evil, must have chosen this sort of revenge for a reason. Thinking that it must be more bitter than their own, they abandoned their ancient way to imitate this one.
I am not so concerned that we should remark on the barbaric horror of such a deed, but that, while we quite rightly judge their faults, we are blind to our own."
Cortez did treat the first nation he encountered respectfully, agreeing to help them in their war with a far more powerful nation. (Similar dynamic in North America, before King Philip's War, which happened because the mutual respect didn't last.) If the Europeans had decided to treat everyone with respect - "Just looking!", they would have been the only group there with any interest in doing that.
> The clash that occurred would have been hard to prevent whenever it happened. As others have pointed out, even basic biology (immunity) was different enough to make an enormous difference without people consciously having to do anything.
In the 16th to 19th centuries, I suppose it would have been an insurmountable medical problem. But what if they were separated until today? Perhaps in an alternate universe, instead of a wooden sailing ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, toxic gas bubbled up from the mid-Atlantic ridge (and a similar barrier in the Pacific), requiring pressurized aircraft to fly over. Or the two groups were on separate planets, requiring space travel to meet.
Would we be able to deal with the medical problems today?
Or, in a less unlikely scenario, there were plagues in the Americas that decimated European settlers more than the reverse, allowing the Native Americans to co-opt European shipbuilding and colonize Africa and Eurasia. Interesting to think about!
> Moctezuma sent some emissaries to greet him. They brought two others with them, who were sacrificed in front of the Spaniards.
The Aztecs were not the only people living in the 1500s Mesoamerica. I don't know much, but Wikipedia mentions peoples like Purepechas, Talaxcaltecs, Matlazincas, Tecos, Mazahuas, Otomies and Chontales. And not even all Nahuas were Aztecs.
Was ritualistic human sacrifice a common practice among all these peoples, or was it something that mostly only Aztecs did?
It's sad to me how little is known about the native Caribbean peoples. When I read stories about a thriving island population, the Maya and Mexica empires, and the new discoveries being made with Lidar in the jungles, I just feel a sense of loss.
What would the Americas -- the world -- look like today if the Europeans never came here? Or at least, came and engaged respectfully.
Think about it, much of what is considered traditional european food actually came from the Americas: potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate. Italian cuisine wouldn't exist without the Americas.
And now that the whole world has benefited, where are the people who gave it all to the rest of us? Eradicated from existence.
Respectfully would have eliminated a massive amount of atrocities, but the end result would have been similar: most of the native popularion dead in the first 150 years of contact. The Americas went from 50-100 million people to fewer than 5 million natives because of disease.
For a while, years ago, I was on an "alternative history" fiction kick. Most of it is dreck, but one diamond in that rough was Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus[1]. Without giving too much away, it's about a group of future historians that use time-travel to study past cultures, and discover that they can not only view past events, but influence them as well. It's got a couple of interesting semi-plausible what-ifs of different ways the Columbian Exchange might have worked out, under different parameters.
Keep in mind that native American groups were conquering, enslaving, and destroying other cultures as well - but they rarely kept records of it. It is not as if there was universal peace in the pre-Columbus Americas.
[+] [-] scroot|8 years ago|reply
One historical scene in particular plays out this idea. It occurred as Cortes marched across today's Mexico towards the city and ruler he had heard so much about. At one point — not yet at the city — Moctezuma sent some emissaries to greet him. They brought two others with them, who were sacrificed in front of the Spaniards.
You can find accounts of this story from both sides: from the chronicles of Cortes and his conquistadors (Bernal Diaz, for example) and from native accounts (as told in The Broken Spears, as another example). And the differing reactions to this event tell you everything. The Spaniards were appalled, some even cried. But the emissaries were totally baffled by their reaction to the gift.
What you see is two cultures separated by an almost unimaginable amount of time, distance, and history. The clash that occurred would have been hard to prevent whenever it happened. As others have pointed out, even basic biology (immunity) was different enough to make an enormous difference without people consciously having to do anything.
Peter Watson's "The Great Divide: History and Human Nature in the Old World and the New" is a pretty fascinating examination of the overall contrasts between Eurasian and New World cultures. It's a story that's hard to tell, and there is a lot of speculation and ambiguity. What is clear, above all else, is that the whole ordeal ended tragically, insomuch as it ever ended at all.
[+] [-] benbreen|8 years ago|reply
"After having treated their prisoners well for a long time, giving them all the provisions that they could one, he who is the chief calls a great assembly of his acquaintances. He ties a rope to one of the arms of the prisoner and on the other end, several feet away, out of harm's way, and gives to his best friend the arm to hold; and the two of them, in the presence of the assembled group, slash him to death with their swords. That done, they roast him and eat him together, sending portions to their absent friends. They do this, not as is supposed, for nourishment as did the ancient Scythians; it represents instead an extreme form of vengeance. The proof of this is that when they saw that the Portuguese, who had allied themselves with their adversaries, executed their captives differently, burying them up to the waist and firing numerous arrows into the remainder of the body, hanging them afterward, [the Tupi] viewed these people from another world, who had spread the knowledge of many vices among their neighbors, and who were much more masterly than they in every sort of evil, must have chosen this sort of revenge for a reason. Thinking that it must be more bitter than their own, they abandoned their ancient way to imitate this one.
I am not so concerned that we should remark on the barbaric horror of such a deed, but that, while we quite rightly judge their faults, we are blind to our own."
http://www2.fiu.edu/~harveyb/oncannibal.htm
[+] [-] Nomentatus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeifCarrotson|8 years ago|reply
In the 16th to 19th centuries, I suppose it would have been an insurmountable medical problem. But what if they were separated until today? Perhaps in an alternate universe, instead of a wooden sailing ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, toxic gas bubbled up from the mid-Atlantic ridge (and a similar barrier in the Pacific), requiring pressurized aircraft to fly over. Or the two groups were on separate planets, requiring space travel to meet.
Would we be able to deal with the medical problems today?
Or, in a less unlikely scenario, there were plagues in the Americas that decimated European settlers more than the reverse, allowing the Native Americans to co-opt European shipbuilding and colonize Africa and Eurasia. Interesting to think about!
[+] [-] sampo|8 years ago|reply
The Aztecs were not the only people living in the 1500s Mesoamerica. I don't know much, but Wikipedia mentions peoples like Purepechas, Talaxcaltecs, Matlazincas, Tecos, Mazahuas, Otomies and Chontales. And not even all Nahuas were Aztecs.
Was ritualistic human sacrifice a common practice among all these peoples, or was it something that mostly only Aztecs did?
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
methinks that it gave one big and convenient argument to the takeover for material and spices. they're inhuman, we shall have no shame in wiping them.
I read recently about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Ginés_de_Sepúlveda and his nemesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas (who lived in South America and could see through the cultural barrier)
Their was a movie about the meeting with the pope also.
[+] [-] iamcasen|8 years ago|reply
What would the Americas -- the world -- look like today if the Europeans never came here? Or at least, came and engaged respectfully.
Think about it, much of what is considered traditional european food actually came from the Americas: potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate. Italian cuisine wouldn't exist without the Americas.
And now that the whole world has benefited, where are the people who gave it all to the rest of us? Eradicated from existence.
[+] [-] CapitalistCartr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megaman22|8 years ago|reply
[1] http://amzn.to/2CvPY10
[+] [-] oh_sigh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curtis|8 years ago|reply
In one sense the original native american population of the Caribbean is gone, but in another sense they're not.